The Art of VickGaza

Thursday, January 5, 2012

I still have to post 2,3 A4 pages but won't as they aren't pretty good and I feel that I've recently level up my drawing skills and don't want to disappoint viewers haha :)

A few words about the technique I've "discovered" or more or less got into to.
While working on toned paper with a color like red or blue, for some reason I feel very loose and relaxed about what I draw so I just pretty much explored shapes and then just added details with white.

What's cool is that even though prismacolor colored pencils aren't really forgiving and erasing is an issue, for some reason I didn't really have the need to erase or correct stuff. Just went over the scribbles with a heavier red line and added "light" with white prismacolor pencil.

On a side note, from a methodological point of view, the reason as to why I've made so many profile dragons and none in perspective is that , from a design point of view it's easier just to design one half of a thing at a time, not really focusing on perspective but on shapes and design. Once a design/shape is found then it can be redrawn in perspective taking more time and being more careful about it, thus saving design time and getting more concepts done in less time.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

These are just part of some of the anatomy studies I've made.
Firstly I'd like to mention of how important Glen Vilppus anatomy dvds are for me.
The guy is amazing, and the fact that you get to see the way he approaches building the figure is an invaluable work method. Drawing on top of forms and not actually interpreting contour is one of the best things I`ve learned so far, not to mention some heftly little details as to where eye attaches and how much of a space there actually is from the corner of the eye to the start of the nose and so on.

Follow this link here in order to get his dvds, the guy is amazing and the dvds are totally worth their weight in gold :)) http://anatomytools.com/products/dvds?show=dvd

On a side note I`d like to take a few moments to explain my research methods and how I currently apply them in my own practice, and why I think that the way I work is really beneficial.

One of the most important thing we, as game artists, must be careful and conscious about is the always changing and evolving trend in videogames, and how these dictate the requirements and standards of our art.
From a less technological and more plastic perspective, games now days tend to go in two major directions, either highly stylised or highly realistic,both trends requiring a very careful and methodological approach in order to be achieved.

Keeping this in mind, we have to know how do we achieve these standards so we are sure that we can always create good artwork that is desired and sells.

The most important thing we as artists can do is study. Before being able to make a highly realistic or a highly stylized character, we first need to be able to understand how and why do things work in nature the way they do, why is the sternocleidomastoid muscle there, and what does it do, why is the clavicle arched towards the deltoids, and what does it do together with the scapula in order for us to move our arm, furthermore, why does light and color behave like it does, why do reflections change according to the angle we look into them, and so on.

The only way we can understand everything around is to firstly research it, reach the concept and knowledge behind the idea, understand and acknowledge the existence of the particular phenomena from various sources, be them books, tutorials, lecturers,etc.

Now comes the important thing, being artists, we must take it a step further, and be able ourselves to imitate in our works what mother nature does so well, and that is to simulate life.
Let's say we now know of the sternocleidomastoid muscle, but now we must be able to apply it's functions and visual presence in our designs. Before doing such we must study visual references of it, over and over again, drawing our friends, drawing from anatomy books, sculpting various neck poses and understand how it works and so on.

After hundreds of studies we can then apply what we have learned into our own designs ... and be able to draw correct neck. Of course this applies to every visual field out there, anatomy is just one of the many things we need to research about aka passively study , then study them actively and finally applying them to our work.

Now go and study about anatomy, perspective, materials, light, color, volume, and proportions and so many many other things !

And now my studies, which are all done on A4 page sizes, traditionally using pencil and coffee :D

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

This is a first batch of drawings, done for fun here in Hoston, Texas away from my workstation.

The shift to tradtional media has been an amazing change, I learned so much, most important patience and the importance of having a strcutured logical approach, things we tend to go over and ignore while doing stuff digitally, being so easy to erase and/or undoo all the time.

This post will also serve as an inspirational entry, would like to mention one of my biggest inspirations so far, MR PAUL RICHARDS, the one and only, author of WWW.AUTODESTRUCT.COM

This guy is a beast, making the most amazing concepts i've seen, not only shining through design and idea, but the visual representation of his concepts is outstanding ...
I can only hope to one day be half as good as a designer/concept artist as Mr. Paul Richards, and then I can go die happy :))
There are tons of other images on his website, I urge you to check all of them out, save them on your hard drives, ipads, ipods and carry them around with you all the time. Whenever bored or not in a mood to draw, open his stuff up, get pumped and draw for 10 hours straight.

Ok and now some of my drawings, done with www.Autodestruct.com open in my browser, some elements are copied some are inspired and some are original with the stuff I learned from previous exercises (but all for educational purposes.)

All pages are A4, done with pencil and rubber and here and there some watercolor soluble 3b pencil.
Hope U like them as much as I enjoyed making them